Hooked Up: Book 2 (42 page)

I noticed my fists scrunched into balls, my nails digging into my hands. I said between my teeth, “You and I are business partners—we are meant to tell each other about anything that could affect this movie. This is not some freaking
family affair
! I resent that you just said that!”

“Calm down, Pearl.”

“No, I won’t calm down! I could sue you for breach of contract. I won’t because I don’t want to waste my time and energy, but this is the last time you will be doing business with HookedUp Enterprises. I will finish this movie because I’m a professional. The show
will
go on. But I do not want to have one single meeting with Sophie Dumas. Is that clear? I do not want to hear her name, or see her at the premiere. If I so much get an inkling of her sniffing about my business, I will get my lawyers onto you. You are a powerful man, Mr. Myers, but my fiancé is even more powerful and richer than you are.”

His eyes looked down ashamedly.

“By the way,” I spat out, “I don’t want Sophie knowing that we’ve had this conversation. I don’t want you running off tattletaling to her about what a bitch I’ve been.”

“You can count on it, I won’t say a word.”

“What you did was wrong. It wasn’t unethical. It was sneaky and dishonest.”

He smiled at me weakly. “Welcome to Hollywood, Pearl.”

I
TOOK THE flamboyant powder blue Cadillac back to the car rental and swapped it for a BMW. I didn’t want to advertise my whereabouts to the whole of LA. I went to the hotel and checked out, and called the airline to cancel my flight to New York.

I would not be returning home tomorrow. I was not sure what I should do next—I needed to come up with a plan. Sitting in my new rental car, in a parking lot near Santa Monica Pier, I called Alexandre. Over the phone was hardly the best way to manage problems in a relationship, but I’d had enough.
I cannot live my life with mistrust. I cannot have this as-good-as incestuous relationship between him and his freaky sister barging in on me with every breath I take.
He knew about Sophie producing
Stone Trooper
and he hadn’t called to let me know! I’d give him a chance to explain himself, but if he didn’t come up with an airtight answer, then that was it.

It’s her or me.

He cannot have us both. He will have to choose. Now. Not tomorrow, not “when the time is right,” but N.O.W.

I needed to have this resolved or nothing would ever change. This was going to be the most painful thing I had ever done in my life, but I had no choice. If I didn’t stand firm now, this Sophie nonsense would never end.

Shaking, I pressed in his number.

“Hello?” he said. Just hearing his deep, melodic voice had me trembling all the more. I was so in love with this man. But I was so furious with him too.

Without saying ‘hi’ I screeched out, “Why didn’t you tell me, Alexandre?”

“Nice to hear your voice, chérie. What’s up?”

“What’s
up
is that I have just come out of a meeting with Samuel Myers. Nice to be working on a movie where I’m the last person to find something out. And I say,
find something out
, as in, not be enlightened by people around me who I am meant to trust, one of those people being my
fiancé,
” I cried, my voice rising as I spluttered out that last word.

“Calm down, Pearl. I was going to tell you when the time was right.”

“If you use this ‘time-is-right’ crap on me anymore I’ll—”

“I was going to call you right now, in fact. It totally slipped my mind, chérie. I just didn’t think it was
that
important, because the source of where the money was coming from was not going to affect you in any way personally.”

“What is
wrong
with you? This is meant to be a HookedUp Enterprises project. That is the
whole point!
HookedUp
Enterprises
is not part of HookedUp. This is not supposed to have anything to do with your sister
at all!
”

“It’s just money, Pearl. Nothing more. I’ve already spoken to her about it. She swears she won’t get involved in the creative side. Sam Myers is in financial straits.”

“You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s all a big fabrication—an excuse for Sophie to wheedle her way into my business. Because one minute Samuel Myers is one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood and suddenly he’s in a quagmire and Sophie just happens to bail him out at the perfect moment—sounds very fishy to me.”

“Pearl, you’re reading way too much into this. He was in a bad way and, yes, maybe Sophie saw a good business opportunity and she snapped it up. She’s getting a chunk of his company in exchange. In the long term it could be a great deal for her.”

“Well bully for her! But it is not a great deal for
me!
Or, I might add, for our future marriage. Or should I say, to be more precise, our
ex
-future marriage!” I was stumbling now, spurting nonsense but I meant every word of my jumbled phrases, however higgledy-piggledy they came out.

There was silence.
Has he hung up on me?

“Alexandre?”

I could hear his breathing. “You don’t mean that, baby. We’re going ahead with this wedding and nothing’s going to stop me. Sophie’s separate from all this. You have got to stop obsessing about her and just ignore her.”

“Me obsessing about
her?
I think you’ll find it’s the other way round, Alexandre. You know what? That’s
it.
I thought maybe we had a chance to sort this problem out, but I see that you are
not
budging—stubborn as ever. You are so fucking wrapped up, and wrapped around your older sister’s devious little finger that you might as well be fucking her for all I care. You two can carry on and live happily ever after because I’m
out.
OUT! Do you hear me? Our relationship is over! I love you but I do not love her and I do not want her burrowing her way into our marriage. You said you were working on ways of extricating yourself from her with HookedUp and in your personal life. Like a fool I believed you. I trusted you. But it was all
bullshit!”

“Pearl, please, darling stop. I know she had good reason to do what she did. She—”

“Alexandre, you can make excuses till the cows come home. I am not going to listen anymore. If the day ever, ever comes when you and she are one hundred percent separated businesswise, then give me a call. Meanwhile, we are over. I am not returning to New York. I’ll finish
Stone Trooper
from a distance by email and long distance calls. Once I have started a project I don’t think it’s professional to abandon ship. However, after that . . . well I don’t know yet . . . I’ll need to work that through but—”

“I’m coming to Los Angeles tonight to get you. This is crazy. We’re getting married. We’ll get married in Vegas tomorrow and we can do the white wedding too, if you want. I’m not standing for this, Pearl. I give you my word I’ll dissolve my part of HookedUp. I’ll make it go public, or Sophie can buy me out, but it will take time, I can’t do something like that overnight. We can draw up a contract with lawyers if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, like the HookedUp Enterprises contract we drew up? Fat lot of good that did! Sophie found a little loophole to slip her way in like the sly snake she is!”

“You’re not listening to reason, Pearl, so I’m coming to get you. I’m calling on my other cell right now and cancelling my meeting here in Montreal. I’m turning around as we speak. I’ll hire a jet and come right now to LA. We’ll go to Vegas and—”

“You’re not listening to me, are you? You deal with your sister and HookedUp
first,
and when you can prove to me that it is
finished,
signed, sealed and delivered, then give me a call. Until then, adieu, Alexandre.” And I added with a tone of spite in my voice, “Besides, the last thing I want is to have a relationship with a
penis
right now.”

His voice was incredulous, tight with anger. “
Excuse
me? Is that what I am to you? A
penis
?”

“Men are pigs. All of you. Deep down inside all you do is rule your lives by your dicks! You rape women. You even rape babies to ‘cure’ yourselves of AIDS which, hello, you got from fucking prostitutes in the first place—underage, abused prostitutes, who should be in school or playing with dolls—”

“What has that got to do with me? What are you
talking
about?”

“The rape ratio in South Africa? One in four men there have committed rape!”

“Pearl—”

“Oh, and that sick, pedophile British DJ who’s dead now? Have you heard about him on the news? Men are sticking their dicks everywhere—they have been since time immemorial—they don’t care who they hurt both physically and mentally: children, disabled people—as long as they get themselves and their stinking dicks off!”

He replied softly to my accusations, “My darling, where’s all this coming from?
What
is going on?”

I was weeping, yowling. I sounded like a braying donkey as I sucked in air between sobs, my head resting on the steering wheel, my body shaking. I managed to get out, “I can’t talk about this anymore. Call Daisy, she’ll . . . tell you . . . what . . . h—happened . . . to . . . m—me.”

I hung up. I couldn’t even think straight. Here I was sitting in my parked rental car with nowhere to go. I couldn’t return to New York right now—I’d already sublet my apartment. I needed a break from Alexandre. Okay, I knew, I was being dramatic—even childish. But it was the only way of getting it through his head.
I do not want Sophie in my life!
Why couldn’t he get that? The one thing I hung onto was my autonomy, my work. And even
that
she was trying to snatch away from me.

My cell rang. It was him. It kept ringing. I let my blood simmer a little, dried my eyes, took a deep breath and picked up.

His voice was steady. “I’ve cancelled my meeting. I’m on my way.”

“Don’t do that because I won’t be here when you arrive.”

I could hear the clipping sound of his purposeful footsteps. He was talking in motion, his long legs striding towards his goal, which happened to be me. “Stay where you are, Pearl. You’re being absurd.”

“I need some time to think all this through. I don’t want to see you for a while, Alexandre.”

He sighed. The anguish in his voice was palpable. “What happened to you? It’s about those nightmares, isn’t it? What happened, baby? Please tell me. Please trust me.”

I closed my eyes and drew my knees up to my chest, and sank into the seat of the car. “A long time ago when I was at university . . . ” I broke my sentence.

“Go on, baby. I’m here for you. I love you,” he cajoled. “Please, share your pain with me. Your pain is my pain. I can help. I can help you through this.”

“No, you can’t. You’re a guy. I’m disgusted by men right now.”

“I understand. I swear I do. I know that men can be vile. You don’t think I know that after my father? But we aren’t all bad, Pearl. We can be kind and caring. What happened, my angel? Please,” he begged gently.

“I was . . . gang raped,” and I added quickly, “but I asked for it. I wore a micro-mini skirt. I went back to their room willingly . . . I thought it would be fun, me with two guys. I invited it to happen, Alexandre. But it turned into something else. Something sick and gross.”

I could hear the echoey announcements at Montreal airport, and Alexandre’s quiet breathing.
I knew it. The idea of me behaving like a slut is too much for him, even if it happened eighteen years ago.

“Who did this to you?”

“You think I remember? I blanked out. I blocked it out. All this shit has been resurfacing in nightmares. I can’t even prove it happened. I was zonked out . . . drunk. Daisy thinks they may have spiked my tequila. Who knows? I behaved like a slut and I got raped.”

His voice was edgy: “You did
not
,” and he said between gritted teeth, “behave like a slut.”

“Thank you,” I replied quietly.

“We’ll get through this together. We don’t have to make love, baby. I won’t touch you, I promise. Not until you’re ready.”

“Please don’t come, Alexandre. I’m serious about what I said. Deal with Sophie and HookedUp first. I need some time alone. I’ll call you in . . . like . . . a week or something. Bye.”

I switched off my cell and took a deep breath. If any of this was to work between us I wanted Sophie out of our lives. Poor Alexandre—he was being understanding, but still. He was part of the male species, and for now I didn’t want a penis near me bringing back visions of needle and walnut-dicks. I needed some time to myself.

I got out of the car and strolled toward Santa Monica Pier. The sun was setting—the sky swirling in moody blues, streaked with orange, making shimmering reflections on the ocean. To the north, the view of the Malibu Mountains was spectacular. I walked briskly until I arrived at the pier. A trapeze school, the Trapeze School New York, was offering classes to anyone daring enough. Their logo read,
Forget fear.
Worry about the addiction
. Hmm . . . addiction. That was how I felt about Alexandre—completely addicted to him. But considering the sexual craving had waned on my part—at least for now—how would that affect our relationship? Before, when there was a problem, we worked it out through sex. The infatuation and carnal desire we held for one another was so all consuming, so powerful, it overrode everything. Would that need and desire return? The compulsion to have him inside me? Fucking me at every opportunity? Right now I needed space, freedom. I couldn’t bear the idea of being smothered, my body invaded . . . even by him.

My cell was off. He’d be frantically phoning now. I felt cruel. But then I remembered Sophie again, slithering into our lives in her oh-so-subtle way.

I watched one of the trapeze students, a little girl who couldn’t have been more than eight-years-old, swinging back and forth, high above me, and I was tempted to give it a go myself. Anything to clear my mind of its present turmoil.

I asked the young woman standing there, “I guess all the classes must be booked up way in advance?”